My Husband is Bipolar

My husband is bipolar.

There, I said it.

Let me say it again.

My husband is bipolar.

I'm 33. He's 20. His mood swings sometimes make my head spin. I knew before we even started dating that he was bipolar. I saw the mood swings while we were dating. Mood swings that resulted in text messages saying, "It's over." With him coming back the next day as if nothing happened, as if we were okay, and it was business as usual.

I'd dealt with bipolar before. My father is bipolar. My mother is bipolar. I've had friends that are bipolar. But this? Living with it, loving someone so deeply with it? It's hard.

That doesn't mean I give up. I love him. That's not changing. I know, when he's ranting and screaming, that it's not the man that I love, the man that I married. It's the disease. I know that.

But it's still hard.

When we fight, he wants out. When he gets mad at someone else, he takes it out on me, and says he wants out. I know that feeling. The feeling of needing to escape, to run. I've just learned over the years not to always express what I'm feeling. That's something he still has to learn.

He's 20. I'm 33. He's bipolar. And we deal with it.